“Look, Ella, none of that matters right now. Darren’s…”
“It does matter, Jayden, you can’t prioritise visiting your boyfriend over your degree, this is Cambridge, it’s…”
“It’s not a visit, Ella!” Jayden raised his voice. “He tried to…Ella, for God’s sake, he tried to kill himself!” he hissed, abruptly lowering it again and hoping they hadn’t heard him in the living room.
“He what?”
“He took an overdose,” Jayden croaked and swallowed. “So I need you to do me a favour, and get…”
“Oh, Jayden,” her voice dropped into a low soothing tone, but her next words belied any sense of impending understanding. “Jayden, I know this must be hard for you, but you can’t just drop everything because he’s done something silly.”
Jayden froze, his blood turning to ice in his veins. He felt cold, and yet his face felt hot; he was flushing hard, but with something quite different to embarrassment.
“He obviously needs serious help, and you can’t be dealing with that alongside your degree. Maybe it’s time you broke up?”
“I…” he started, cleared his throat, and found his voice. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I just think you’d be better off.”
“And what about him?”
“What about him, Jayden?” she asked crossly. “He’s obviously only thinking about himself! It’s selfish, Jayden!”
“You have no fucking idea,” Jayden hissed, his voice shaking. “You have no fucking idea, Ella. He’s ill, it’s an illness, he doesn’t decide to…to do that to get back at me or get my fucking attention! What’s wrong with you that you think people do that?!”
“Jayden…”
“No, just…just shut up, shut up,” Jayden retorted. He was physically shaking, and he grasped on to the counter with a trembling hand. “You just don’t get it, Ella, it’s all perfect for you and nobody ever has illnesses that make them think they’re worthless and life’s not worth living and that they’d be better off dead, it doesn’t work like that for you, and you know what, you’re the selfish one because you just put yourself first and nobody else, and it doesn’t occur to you that maybe I’ve gone because I love him, I really really love him and it destroyed me to get that call and fuck my degree when my boyfriend is in hospital after taking a bottle of codeine!”
She was still talking, trying to talk over him, and then there was a large, warm hand on his shoulder and the phone was being removed from his shaking grasp. He let Paul take it, the white case glowing against his dark fingers, and gripped the counter with both hands.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said politely into the phone, “but Jayden has more important things to do right now, like re-boil a kettle. Fuck you, and have a nice day.” He hung up, and nodded towards the aforementioned kettle, scrolling through a menu.
“Bitch,” Jayden whispered fiercely, flicking the kettle back on. It was lukewarm. “Did you hear…”
“All of your side,” Paul said. “Ethan wants hot chocolate too, says it’s not fair the jerk’s getting it all. Here,” he offered the mobile back, “deleted. Who’s Ella?”
“A stupid girl from college,” Jayden muttered, scrolling back down the amended contacts list. “Can you…?” he gestured at the kettle. “I need to call Leah. I was going to ask Ella to pack up my stuff for me, but Jesus.”
“Jesus won’t do it, he’s dead,” Paul returned flippantly. “And high-five me, man,” he added, holding up a plate of a hand. “You finally grew a pair. Darren’s been complaining about your mates ever since you started there.”
Jayden obediently slapped his hand, then turned away with the ringing cut out and Leah’s monotone filtered down the line. “Leah? Leah, I need a favour…”
Chapter 31
Jayden was woken early the next morning by Dad. He stuck his unshaven face around the door and beckoned, disappearing back into the hall the minute Jayden touched a foot to the floor.
It was half past six, and the car was running. Mum was nowhere to be seen, and Jayden padded downstairs to find Dad hefting a bag off the sofa. “Livvy’s gone into labour,” he said briskly. “We’re off. I might be back this evening, or might wait it out, see how it goes. You know where the food is. You can use my account with Habib’s to order tonight only, and don’t go overboard.”
“‘Kay,” Jayden said, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes and peering through the curtain. Mum was sitting in the car, looking perfectly calm—much calmer than Dad, anyway. “Good luck,” he added as a bit of an afterthought, and Dad grimaced.
“Cheers,” he grumbled, and then he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him and the automatic lock sliding into secure place. As the car pulled away, the silence rushed in to claim it, and Jayden hunched his shoulders against it. It felt wrong, like it was waiting for something, and he felt edgy when it was too quiet now. Like he’d go back upstairs to find Darren…
Rachel said he’d been playing the violin all night before he…his inner voice reminded him, but it didn’t make any more sense than the first time, and he pushed the thought away, heading back upstairs before his imagination could go into further detail.
The noise hadn’t disturbed Darren in the slightest, and Jayden crept back into bed gingerly. But that hadn’t changed: Darren slept on, oblivious, and Jayden curled around him like if he only held on hard enough, he could keep the illness at bay, keep out all the clouds and the rain.
This had never happened before, not since they’d met three and a half years ago, and Jayden was painfully aware of that. He clutched and buried his face in Darren’s wild hair, and considered just out-and-out praying for the first time in his life. Rachel said he’d been playing the violin all night…
Jayden only realised he’d dozed off again when a shrill buzzing interrupted his shadowed, dozing thoughts, and Darren shifted suddenly, the mattress curving under his weight. The buzzing stopped; Jayden blinked the haze out of his eyes, and realised it had been the alarm on his phone.
Darren sat up, swimming in a shirt Scott had brought him yesterday evening, and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. He’d been near-mute after the visits yesterday. Paul and Ethan had worn him out, and then Scott had come round for tea and been…still angry, somehow, still prickly. Darren had disappeared into himself after that, and now Jayden watched, chewing on his lip and searching for something to say, before finally whispering, “Breakfast?”
Darren dropped one hand and rested his forehead in the other. His fingers curled limply on the sheets, before he looked over his shoulder at Jayden, and there was a storm in the tropical seas of his eyes. The offer died on Jayden’s tongue and he pushed himself up to simply wrap his arms around those broad shoulders, fingers rubbing down the bone-deep scar on the left, and pushed his head into the space between neck and nicked, pitted clavicle.
“Rachel said,” Jayden whispered there, “that you were playing the violin all night.”
The second half, the but you can’t have been, drifted into the room like a far-off echo. Darren stared at the foot of the bed, and breathed rather than said, “Recording.”
“Your laptop?”
“Yes.”
Jayden opened his mouth and closed it. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he wanted to ask. But he didn’t know how: for the first time in his life, language failed him and left him with a boiling sea of everything—hurt, anger, guilt, gut-wrenching horror, love—that he couldn’t hope to express. And so what came out was a single, cracked syllable, barely audible for the break in the middle, and followed by a rush of heat behind his eyes and in his throat.
“Why?”
Darren’s chest paused, and Jayden sat up to watch, as that perfect mouth—sore and chapped from endless biting now—pursed, slackened, twitched, and finally shivered, the bottom lip flickering out of time with the rest of that still, blank face, and Jayden’s heart twisted.
“I just…” Darren croaked, and his face froze like he wa
s trying not to move, half-seized and half-stilled. “I…” He turned that tropical storm on Jayden and lost the fight. “I just wanted to stop drifting,” he whispered, and his face crumpled.
The first sob broke onto Jayden’s shoulder; he gathered Darren in, at a loss of what to do but hang on to the very thing he’d nearly lost, and he clung all the harder when the second sob rattled them both and clawed at his chest when Darren’s rocked. The tears were sudden and explosive, violent and ugly, Darren’s breaths turned into harsh shrieks of air in a constricted throat, and what remained of his tired voice destroyed by the upswell of the storm in his head. And Jayden clung on, tears leaking in silence down his own face, and tried to block out the memory of Vivaldi’s seasons on a small-town theatre stage three years ago.
“I’m so fucked up, Jayden,” came the first scratchy attempts at words, and Jayden’s heart stopped entirely, beaten into submission by the pain. “I’m so fucked up, I’m fucking crazy, I…”
“You’re not,” Jayden whispered fiercely, pressing his face into the top of Darren’s shoulder and holding on like they were drowning in a rip tide. “You’re not, you’re not, you’re not…”
He drowned it all out, pushed away Darren’s panicked litany of self-reproachful with simple denial, because what else could he do? How did you talk someone down who wasn’t rational? How did you hold on when there nothing you could do? How could you…
Jayden swallowed hard and clung until he was sure he was leaving bruises. When Darren’s hands finally came to rest on his own back, he clung even harder and stopped caring. How could you help when you’d caused it all?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, changing tune and pressing the words into Darren’s ear desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry…”
Darren’s words seemed to dry up, and for the first time in three and a half years, he simply let everything go, and cried.
* * * *
They ended up, of all things, going back to sleep.
Jayden woke up still wrapped around Darren. Darren’s face was blotchy and pale, but dry, his closed eyes rimmed in sore-looking red. Jayden curled a little closer for a minute, rubbing his hand along the inside of Darren’s closest arm. The skin was smooth—or, at least, there weren’t any new catches there. He hadn’t…
Jayden kissed his exposed neck and slid out of bed. It was just after eleven, and he rubbed a hand into Darren’s hair, perching on the edge of the mattress, and coaxed him awake. “Lunch?” he whispered when Darren stirred and blinked hazy green eyes up at him.
“S’on offer?” Darren mumbled, sounding almost like himself in that half-asleep state, and Jayden’s heart clenched.
“Whatever you want,” he tried, but when that failed to get even a spark of interest (from Darren, the human dustbin, the waste disposal unit! That was just wrong, and it hurt, and…he shook it off and tried to forget it) he offered beans on toast, and received a weary nod.
“I’m going to shower,” Darren mumbled and untangled himself without any of his usual grace. Jayden watched him go and hated himself for mentally cataloguing what was in the bathroom cabinet.
“Fifteen minutes?” he called warily. He got no answer, but figured it was enough of a warning, and laid out some of his looser, larger clothes for when Darren was done. Scott hadn’t brought much; he’d been intent on persuading Darren to go to Northampton with him instead.
Jayden took himself downstairs. His phone had been left in to charge on the kitchen counter, and had a message from Dad saying they weren’t likely to be home until tomorrow as ‘bloody baby’s as slow as your bloody mother getting ready’ so they could use his debit card and get pizza for dinner tonight instead of a takeaway from Habib’s. BUT ONLY PIZZA, he finished in dire warning, and then followed it with his PIN. Which Jayden already knew, but had the wisdom not to tell him.
Darren materialised, damp-haired and dressed in Jayden’s clothes, about twenty minutes later. He looked awake, but empty; Jayden kissed the wet curls as he sat down and presented him with food, and watched biting his lip as Darren merely picked at it instead of inhaling it.
“Are you not hungry?” he tried, but Darren only shrugged.
He looked physically better after his shower. His hair didn’t share the depression with its owner, and was exploding in all directions with joyful ignorance, and the pinched, red-eyed look had faded in the shower. He didn’t flinch away when Jayden sat next to him either, and offered a small, tremulous smile when Jayden pressed his fingers into the crook of Darren’s elbow and ate in silence next to him, trying to ignore how painful it was to watch Darren chase food around his plate.
He just didn’t know what to say.
And then Darren broke the silence, in strangely characteristic format, by muttering, “What about work?”
Jayden blinked. “Sorry?”
“Work,” Darren repeated. “I haven’t…called in sick, or…”
“Rachel did,” Jayden said. “Rachel called and told them that you’d had an accident.”
“What?” Darren looked startled.
Jayden bit his lip. “She said…she said they might not be…happy if she told them it was a…well, anyway, she told them you took the overdose accidentally and you’re still, you know, tired and, um, throwing up and stuff.”
Darren heaved a deep sigh and nodded. “So I’m due back in a week or so.”
“Something like that,” Jayden agreed, stroking Darren’s arm lightly. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, we can sort it out when it comes to it, and it’s not like they can make you go back when you’re ill, and…”
Darren nodded and stared blankly down at the half-eaten toast. Jayden shut up, and chewed on his lip some more.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered eventually, and Darren glanced at him. “I’m sorry for not answering your call.”
Darren’s eyes closed as if he were in pain, and he shook his head. “Not now,” he murmured. “I can’t…not now.”
Jayden flinched and squeezed his elbow. For a moment, that deadly silence rolled in again, and then Jayden gathered himself. There was no use trying to talk about it now; Darren wasn’t capable of it, and Jayden couldn’t do it yet. He was still on the verge of crying every time Darren gave him that tired, blank look, and too tangled up to say what he needed to say, and…and how? How was he supposed to say it? How could…
“Want to just…laze around today, watch films? We could work our way through Dad’s action collection while he’s not here?”
Finally, a spark lit behind Darren’s eyes, and Jayden curled both hands into his elbow and pulled him up from the table.
“Any film you want,” he said. “Even the boring ones.”
* * * *
The car rumbling onto the drive at half past ten at night interrupted the fourth boring film, and Jayden suddenly hated the new baby with an irrational force. The film was the first real spark of interest Darren had shown in anything, and if the baby coming home meant he was going to retreat…
“Darling! We’re home!”
…then they could take it right back.
To his surprise, Darren swung his feet off the bed and went to the door of his own accord. Hardly daring to hope that the darkness had passed, or even eased, Jayden went after him, following the sound of Dad tossing Mum’s overnight bag at the stairs, and Mum’s kind of disturbing cooing.
She had a bundle. Looked like Dad didn’t know fast labour from slow. It whimpered, and Jayden stopped on the fifth step and stared at it.
“Um, so?” he tried.
“Well?” Mum prompted. “Come down here and say hello to your little sister!”
Jayden took one step before Darren said, quite suddenly, “Pay up.”
For a brief second, Jayden had no idea what that was supposed to mean. And then his memory caught up with him: Darren’s decision at Christmas that Mum was going to have a girl because…well, never mind the because.
Jayden smiled so wide his face hurt
, and Darren glanced up at him before looking away and back to the bundle, shifting as if embarrassed. Jayden didn’t care if he was embarrassed. He’d made a joke, and that was…that was…
He instantly forgave the baby everything.
“Does it have a name?”
“She, Jayden! She is your sister!”
Half-sister, anyway. And with a nineteen year age gap, he hoped Mum didn’t expect him to actually do any brothering duties. He peered over the edge of the pink blanket and wrinkled his nose at the equally pink-faced baby. She looked squashed. And…kind of like Dad. Which was unfortunate.
Darren grimaced at his shoulder, and Jayden maybe wasn’t telepathic, but he just knew that Darren was thinking the same thing.
“Here.”
Both of them started; Mum was staring intently at Darren, and Darren looked suddenly panicked.
“Here, darling. Hold her.”
“I…”
“Go on, dear, you won’t drop her.”
Jayden knew very well Darren wouldn’t drop her, but the look on Darren’s face said that for whatever reason, he wasn’t keen on the idea. Still, he’d never been able to refuse Mum anything, and she pressed the bundle into his hands, and the baby sort of wriggled, and Darren’s hands and forearms just curled around her, and…and Jayden’s stomach clenched.
His boyfriend holding his baby sister was somehow ridiculously…perfect.
And Darren was used to it, despite the wary look he was giving the baby. Maybe it was Misha, maybe it was natural, but he was in his element with the weight of her along his arms, his massive hands dwarfing her tiny body. Jayden slowly slid his arms around Darren’s waist and pressed into his side, pretending to be doing it to peer down at the baby again, nestling comfortably at Darren’s chest and curling a stupidly small hand into his T-shirt, but really doing it just to hold him.
“What’s she called?” Darren asked, and his voice had dropped into a low rumble that Jayden usually called his sleepy voice. The baby pushed her face against his chest at the sound, and if newborn babies could look contented, she was. (But then, Jayden knew how much heat Darren radiated and figured that probably felt pretty good to a new baby.)
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